The Observer – There is no case for torture – ever (by Nick Cohen)

The troubles of Craig Murray, the sacked British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, appear at first glance to be a shocking exception to the rules of public life. When was the last time you heard of a case of a diplomat accused of drunken orgies and sexual blackmail after he had discomforted his masters in Whitehall? You don’t have to be Michael Moore to wonder if the Foreign Office needed to revert to the unparalleled tactic of tipping wheelbarrow loads of dirt over Murray to bury his bad news that Britain was in the market for information extracted by torturers.

Murray’s allegation is shocking because, say what you like about England, it has shunned torture for centuries. If you look a bit closer, however, you find that torture is no longer as exceptional as it once was. With many a sigh and expression of regret the Government is reaching an arrangement with torturers, and not only in Uzbekistan. English judges have accepted that confessions beaten out of suspects can be used for the first time since the 1630s. The only reaction, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, could manage to their extraordinary decision was the Peck sniffian bleat that he had the ‘awful feeling’ that learning to live with torture ‘is probably the right conclusion.’ As with so many other descents into barbarism, the judges and ministers make each step on the downward path appear eminently reasonable.

However strenuously the wishful thinkers of Western liberalism deny there is much to worry about, Islamism remains a psychopathic and totalitarian creed which sanctions the indiscriminate murder of countless victims. Reasonable governments know that the battle must be joined and that they must work to prevent crimes beyond the imagination of the world before 11 September.

But how should the security services react? Take the example of Murray’s Uzbekistan. It is caught in the same vice as many Muslim countries. On one side is a repressive government. On the other is an opposition some of whose members are turning to Islamism. You might have thought MI6 would be watching. Right and left fantasise about the spies’ reach and power: they either uncover deadly subversives or target every ‘freedom’ movement according to political taste. Both parties are united by the assumption that the security services have a competence bordering on the omniscient. What else is the near-universally believed charge that Blair lied about Iraq based on but the delusory notion that John Scarlett of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6 knew that Saddam had disarmed and were silenced?

In fact MI6 doesn’t have one spy in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or any of the other dangerous central Asian republics. It’s a small organisation which employs about 2000 people, many of them support staff. Even if it did have the resources to put men in Tashkent, what could they do? Roam Uzbekistan breaking into houses and interrogating suspects? In the circumstances it seems a reasonable step for the Foreign Office to take information from the oppressive governments of central Asia and the Middle East, even if there is a danger that it has been extracted by torturers. And it would be reasonable if, say, a plot by Uzbek exiles in London was treated simply as a tip-off which led to searches, surveillance and all the other normal means for collecting evidence which would stand up in a British court. If torture was involved, it would be somewhere far back down the line in a foreign country of which we knew little. The integrity of the case brought against the suspects in Britain wouldn’t be threatened.

What is now threatening the integrity of the criminal justice system is the internment of foreign terrorist suspects without trial or knowledge of the charges against them. Their claim that their detention is illegal was rejected by the Court of Appeal in August and is cur rently being considered by the Law Lords. Most media attention has been on the main argument by human rights groups that the law is discriminatory because it allows foreigners to be detained indefinitely while British citizens enjoy full civil rights. This is one of the many occasions when liberals should be careful of what they wish for.

The Government could very easily become a model of impartiality by interning British citizens alongside the alleged enemy aliens. David Blunkett has dropped strong hints that he would want to do just that if there was an Islamist attack on Britain, and I doubt if he would be stopped by a wave of public revulsion.

Far less attention has been given to the ruling by two of the three judges on the Court of Appeal that it was fine to hold men on the basis of evidence extracted by torture. No one can actually say that this happened because, contrary to all the principles of English justice, they aren’t allowed to know what they are meant to have done. But their lawyers suspect that they have been jailed because of confessions from inmates at Guantanamo Bay who have been threatened with dogs, stripped and kept in solitary confinement. Their allegation goes way beyond the charge that the security services followed up leads from brutal foreign agencies. It suggests that people are being held indefinitely in British jails because a naked man beset by dogs named him to placate his tormentors.

So what, snapped the Court of Appeal. There is no other way, blubbed Lord Falconer.

Their accommodation with torture is astonishing on many levels. The first is its hypocrisy. The court said that the British state was still forbidden from conniving in or procuring torture. If its agents reached for the cosh or the electric flex, they would be breaking the law. But if evidence extracted by foreign torturers was now admissible, why should the gloves be kept on British hardmen? Why should our boys be held back simply because of their British citizenship?

The Court of Appeal had no coherent answer, and the nonchalance with which it endorsed foreign torturers showed how feeble national traditions have become. Until the war of terror, it was inconceivable that an English court would accept that a man could be jailed on the basis of torture, albeit torture conducted by shifty foreigners. The English didn’t do torture. Uniquely in medieval Christendom, the English common law forbad the extraction of evidence under duress.

The exception to the benign rule was the Court of Star Chamber, which was allowed to torture the king’s enemies. Its barbaric practices were one cause of the civil war. Such was the hatred it aroused that ‘Star Chamber justice’ remains a contemptuous condemnation of arbitrary power to this day.

Writing at the high point of liberal Victorian self-confidence Lord Macaulay said that Star Chamber was an aberration which, ‘after the lapse of more than two centuries,’ was still ‘held in deep abhorrence by the nation’. It ‘displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age’. I’m not sure if the English can be quite as self-confident about the decency of the national tradition today. It’s not that Star Chamber is back, rather that, as with so many other services, torture has been out-sourced to the third world where bothersome regulation is less intrusive.

What is dispiriting about the degeneracy of the Government and the Court of Appeal is that the old lessons have to be learned once again. The reasons why first England and then the civilised world rejected torture were practical as well as moral. Most people break under torture. Most people say whatever they have to say to stop the pain. When names are suggested to them, they agree. If the torturer wants to implicate the innocent or invent imaginary plots, he usually gets what he wants from his victim.

If the Law Lords doubt the wisdom of centuries and are considering upholding the Court of Appeal’s verdict, may I suggest a small experiment? If they give me a law officer, the Lord Chancellor perhaps, or the Director of Public Prosecutions, and a couple of heavies, and leave us alone in a locked room, I think I can guarantee that within a week he will have revealed that the entire senior judiciary are members of al-Qaeda.

The Guardian – How can Britain stoop so low? (Press Review)

Michael Portillo Sunday Times, October 17

“‘We are selling our souls for dross.’ So wrote Craig Murray, ambassador to Uzbekistan, referring to the fact that Britain and the United States are accepting intelligence extracted from suspects under torture. Mr Murray is offended on moral grounds that the western democracies are in the market for information beaten out of prisoners. He also believes that we are being bamboozled, because terrified captives will say whatever their interrogators demand and then the nasty regime in Tashkent spices it up to make us believe that it is on the front line against al-Qaida.

“The reaction of the Foreign Office has been to defend the UK’s practice, saying that it would be irresponsible to disregard leads obtained under duress, and to dismiss Mr Murray as ambassador. How has Britain come to stoop so low? One of the things that defined us as a nation was our abhorrence of brutality. How can it be then we also encourage foreign governments to mistreat prisoners?”

Financial Times Editorial, October 16

“The Tashkent tyranny of President Islam Karimov is one of the worst in the world, with more than 5,000 political prisoners and capable of boiling men to death. Its value as a forward US base for Afghanistan operations has given it the confidence to sell a long-running campaign against internal dissidents as part of the campaign against al-Qaida. That is a confidence trick the west appears willing to fall for.

“The moral and legal case against torture should not need further argument. Unhappily, it needs to be continually restated in opposition not only to what goes on in such places as Uzbekistan, but in US-run facilities such as Guant?namo, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan. As for the Foreign Office, if it sends a principled person to advance an unprincipled policy it is not only incompetent but riding for a fall – and deservedly so.”

Independent Editorial, October 16

“Over two years in Uzbekistan, Mr Murray had been outspoken about the abuse of human rights in that former Soviet republic. He might have got away with this hardly controversial view – indeed, he says he had cleared all his public speeches with the Foreign Office – had he not gone on to query the extent to which the US and Britain were turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in states such as Uzbekistan for the sake of the ‘war on terror’. Implicating a third country, let alone a close ally, is a bigger offence than merely criticising your own.

“Earlier this year, the Foreign Office produced a new mission statement, which placed combating global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction at the top of its priorities, followed by protection from illegal immigration, drug trafficking and international crime. Human rights occupied the sixth of eight places. Craig Murray was working to the old agenda. Good for him.”

Times Editorial, October 16

“As laudable as Mr Murray’s motives were, his methods were self-indulgent. As ambassador he had unique access to [the Uzbek] regime via channels closed even to the most assiduous journalists, and his duty was to use them to advance Britain’s interests, especially in security and trade, as well as those of Uzbekistan’s oppressed dissidents and moderate Muslims.

“He described himself this week as a ‘victim of conscience’. If so, the right time to salve his conscience, and the most effective time from the point of view of those he seeks to help, would have been at a post-resignation press conference. Mr Murray is guilty of naivety.”

Daily Express Editorial, October 16

“Craig Murray has accused MI6 of using information obtained by the Uzbek government through torture: the Foreign Office has responded by claiming Mr Murray arranged visas in exchange for sex with women. Mr Murray fiercely denies the claims.

“This is no way for Britain to be conducting her foreign affairs in public: both parties should pipe down. But what is most depressing is this: Mr Murray emerges as far more credible than the Foreign Office. What a sad decline in our country if we can even imagine that one of the great departments of state is capable of telling a lie.”

Daily Telegraph Editorial, October 16

“Compromises must be made during wars, of course. In the face of the Soviet menace, we propped up a number of brutal tyrants, telling ourselves, ‘He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.’ In this case, though, it is far from clear that such an attitude serves western interests. The fact is that there is virtually no religious fundamentalism in Uzbekistan. The traveller to central Asia sees beards or headscarves rarely, and hears few calls to prayer.

“But President Karimov’s claim that he is besieged by Muslim fanatics may eventually prove self- fulfilling. If they are offered no other outlet for their hatred of the regime, Uzbeks may indeed turn to fundamentalism. The quickest way to finish off the extremists in central Asia would be to encourage the development of property rights and political pluralism. What a pity that saying so should be a sacking offence.”

The Guardian – Undiplomatic truths (Leader)

Foreign Office mandarins may well be irritated by the undiplomatic behaviour of Craig Murray, who has been formally removed as British ambassador to Uzbekistan. But he has raised a vital issue that lies at the heart of the “war on terror” and this country’s role in it. Mr Murray’s complaint, unrelated to questions about his professional performance, private life and health, is that MI6 has been using bogus intelligence obtained under torture by a government with a dire human rights record. His objections, raised in an internal FCO memo and amplified in media interviews yesterday, is that this practice should be eschewed on moral, legal and practical grounds.

Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic of 26 million people, has found its strategic importance greatly enhanced by the way the world has changed since 9/11. President Islam Karimov now plays host to a US base that is crucial to military operations in neighbouring Afghanistan. But violence has also come to his own backyard, with bomb blasts and shoot-outs in Tashkent and near the Silk Road city of Bukhara. Uzbek officials insist they are fighting militants linked to al-Qaida. Foreigners point to poverty and the imprisonment of dissident Muslims angered by a crackdown on those who worship outside state-run mosques. Every year about 200 people are executed in Uzbekistan, with the killings carried out in secret and families denied a last meeting with convicted relatives. Amnesty International receives regular and credible allegations of unfair trials, ill-treatment and torture – described as “endemic” by a UN envoy – often to extract confessions. The information – “dross,” says this renegade diplomat- is passed to the US, and thence to UK intelligence and security bodies.

Mr Murray’s complaint fits into a broader and worrying pattern that is visible both at home and abroad. The Guant?namo Bay and Abu Ghreib prison scandals have done much to tarnish the legitimate effort to prevent terrorist atrocities. The law lords are due to rule shortly on the highly controversial question of whether British courts may use evidence extracted under torture as long as British agents are not complicit in the abuse. It is only three weeks since Sir Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Italy, described George Bush as al-Qaida’s best recruiting sergeant, though his remarks were made in private. The more junior Mr Murray has been bolder in speaking out publicly. His career prospects – and an eventual knighthood – are now looking distinctly uncertain. But he has performed a valuable public service by following the dictates of his conscience.

By Peter Graff ? Reuters

British spies “lap up” information gathered through torture, hurting Britain’s ability to fight for human rights, the ambassador to Uzbekistan has said in a leaked memo obtained by Reuters.

In the memo, ambassador Craig Murray complained to superiors in London that British officials were “selling their souls for dross” — accepting bogus confessions tortured out of detainees and designed to trick Washington and London into supporting Uzbekistan’s harsh policies and giving it military aid.

Reuters obtained the secret July memo on Monday from a source who requested anonymity. Excerpts from it also appeared in the Financial Times on Monday.

“We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek Security Services, via the U.S. We should stop,” Murray wrote. “This is morally, legally and practically wrong.

The practice “fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture; they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.”

A spokeswoman for the foreign office declined to comment on the memo itself but said: “Britain never uses torture to get information.”

But she added: “We recognise there is a need for intelligence on counterterrorism to protect the safety of British nationals. It would be irresponsible to rule this information out of hand.”

Uzbekistan, an ex-Soviet republic in central Asia, has become an ally of the United States since the September 11 attacks, offering air bases for warplanes flying over Afghanistan. It denies it systematically practises torture.

Its government has battled Islamist guerrillas, some of whom were based in Afghanistan. But human rights groups say Uzbekistan has exaggerated the threat to win Western support and justify draconian policies, including torture.

Murray said he had raised his concern in London and was briefed by Foreign Office officials that it was “not illegal for Britain to obtain and use intelligence obtained through torture” as long as the information was not used as evidence in trials.

He was also briefed by an official from British intelligence who told him that spies found “some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror”.

But Murray said the material was disinformation designed to trick the United States and Britain into giving aid.

“TORTURED DUPES”

“Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the U.S. and the UK to believe: that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

“I repeat that this material is useless — we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful,” he wrote.

“The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.”

Murray said Britain’s own spy agency lacked the knowledge to evaluate the material, which it received from the American CIA.

“MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment,” he wrote.

He described meeting an old man who was forced to watch his sons being tortured until he signed a confession admitting links to Osama bin Laden. “Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with bin Laden as I do.”

Britain has never denied that its spies use information that may have been obtained through torture abroad. In fact, the government has argued that it should be allowed to use such information in tribunals determining whether foreign terrorism suspects can be held without charge.

The High Court upheld that practice, which is now before a panel of the House of Lords sitting as Britain’s highest court.

The Foreign Office spokeswoman said Britain’s policy toward Uzbekistan is “political engagement”. “We are pushing Uzbekistan to fully implement a plan of action to stop torture.”